Ian Moffat

• Fellow at Flinders University

Archaeological field research in South African archaeology has been dominated by rock shelters. While rock shelters provide the advantage of a defined area of investigation and more limited processes of erosion and sediment accumulation, they only capture part of the archaeological, environmental and landscape records. More of the record can be fou...

In the original publication [...]

Locating clandestine graves presents significant challenges to law enforcement agencies, necessitating the testing of grave detection techniques. This experimental study, conducted under Australian field conditions, assesses the effectiveness of time-lapse ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) in detecting pig b...

In 2012, Australian Archaeology published the paper entitled ‘Review of Geophysical Applications in Australian Archaeology’. The goals of the article were to examine the history of archaeo-geophysics in Australian archaeological research and cultural heritage management (CHM) and consider what factors may have prevented these methods from being uti...

The route and speed of migration into Sahul by Homo sapiens remain a major research question in archaeology. Here, we introduce an approach which models the impact of the physical environment on human mobility by combining time-evolving landscapes with Lévy walk foraging patterns, this latter accounting for a combination of short-distance steps and...

This article describes and contextualises the rock art at the Thurk Petroglyph Site on the Murray River in South Australia using multiple methods. The Thurk Aboriginal engravings comprise at least 524 motifs made up predominantly of geometric line elements as well as a small number of other ‘simple’ geometric motifs, two ‘bird tracks’, one figurati...

Arnhem Land, which has one of the longest records of human activity on the Australian continent, also holds one of the most important assemblages of rock art in the world. Indigenous artistic practice in this region has continued since before the Last Glacial Maximum through to the modern day, a period of at least 28 thousand years, during which ti...

Advanced geoscience techniques are essential to contextualize fossils, artefacts and other archaeologically important material accurately and effectively. Their appropriate use will increase confidence in new interpretations of the fossil and archaeological record, providing important information about the life and depositional history of these mat...

Research in many forensic science fields commonly uses domestic pigs ( Sus spp.) as proxies for human remains, due to their physiological and anatomical similarities, as well as being more readily available. Unfortunately, previous research, especially that which compares the decompositional process, has shown that pigs are not appropriate proxies...

The rock shelter site Klipfonteinrand 1 (KFR1), located on the edge of southern Africa’s Fynbos biome, was initially excavated by John Parkington in 1969. Due to difficulties resolving the stratigraphic sequence, the lack of age estimates, and generally poor organic preservation, the Middle Stone Age (MSA) components of the site have received limit...

Arnhem Land is a key region for understanding the Pleistocene colonisation of Australia, due to the presence of the oldest sites in the continent. Despite this, conventional archaeological survey has not been effective at locating additional pre-Holocene sites in the region due to a complex distribution of geomorphic units caused by sea level rise...

Article accessible for free here: https://rdcu.be/c7HpZ We appreciate the accompanying technical Comment by Murphy et al.1—a group of practicing orthopaedic surgeons—on our original paper2. However, we strongly disagree with their conclusion that a reductionist approach was taken in the diagnosis of surgical amputation in a 31,000-year-old individ...

Despite the wealth of Late Pleistocene archaeology that exists across southern Africa’s open landscape, it is routinely neglected in favour of rock shelter (re)excavation, biasing interpretation of human–environment interaction. This is compounded by the scarcity of open-air studies that use geoarchaeological methods to investigate the history and...

The rock shelter site Klipfonteinrand 1 (KFR1), located on the edge of southern Africa’s Fynbos biome, was initially excavated by John Parkington in 1969. Due to difficulties resolving the stratigraphic sequence, the lack of age estimates, and generally poor organic preservation, the Middle Stone Age (MSA) components of the site have received limit...

The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of settled agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago (the Neolithic Revolution) gave rise to a host of health problems that had previously been unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medical practices...

By nature, clandestine burials are difficult to locate, an issue that can complicate the legal process, and interrupt the natural grief process of the family. The purpose of this paper is to present a three-step process to search for clandestine graves using (1) geographic profiling, (2) light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and (3) near surface geo...

Tooth enamel and dentine samples from 13 individuals buried in the unmarked ‘free ground’ colonial section of St Mary’s Anglican Cemetery in Adelaide were analysed for oxygen and strontium isotopic composition to assist with the determination of their geographic origin. As the life history of these individuals is not well-documented in the historic...

Correction to: Chapter 6 in: E. Ch’ng et al. (eds.), Visual Heritage: Digital Approaches in Heritage Science, Springer Series on Cultural Computing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77028-0_6

This paper presents the results of an archaeological investigation into anthropogenic earth (oven) mounds located on the Murray River floodplain at Calperum Station in the Renmark region of South Australia. Six mounds were excavated and their contents examined. Sediment analyses were also conducted to assess magnetic susceptibility, grain size and...

The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago (the ‘Neolithic Revolution’) gave rise to a host of health problems that were previously unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medico-socio-cultural practi...

Africa’s Middle Stone Age preserves sporadic evidence for novel behaviours among early modern humans, prompting a range of questions about the influence of social and environmental factors on patterns of human behavioural evolution. Here we document a suite of novel adaptations dating approximately 92–80 thousand years before the present at the arc...

The creation of high-resolution 3D models using structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry is an emerging research tool in archaeology that allows the spatially accurate representation of rock art sites and landscapes. This methodology allows the creation of immersive representations of important cultural-heritage sites using widely available, inex...

Recent archaeological excavations at Liang Jon, a limestone rockshelter in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesian Borneo, have revealed a cultural sequence covering the period from around 16,700 calibrated radiocarbon years before present (16.7 kyr cal BP) until the late Holocene—a time of dynamic environmental, social, and economic change thro...

Many ancient Greek cities are characterised by a regular orthogonal road network. These roads are ideal targets for geophysical investigation mainly due to their extensive geographic extent that makes them challenging to define by excavation. Geophysical mapping of these features will contribute to understanding ancient cities as it can provide con...

Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr / 86Sr) are a key geochemical tracer used in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food and forensic sciences. These applications are based on the principle that the Sr isotopic ratios of natural materials reflect the sources of strontium available during their formation. A major constraint for curren...

Seven adult human teeth from Cave T1 were analysed for trace element concentrations using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) and strontium isotope compositions using Laser Ablation Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-MC-ICPMS). The aim of this study was to examine whether the people b...

Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr = 86Sr) of biogenic material such as bones and teeth reflect the local sources of strontium ingested as food and drink during their formation. This has led to the use of strontium isotope ratios as a geochemical tracer in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food studies and forensic sciences. In ord...

A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical...

This work explores the applicability and effectiveness of electrical resistivity tomography in mapping archaeological relics in the shallow marine environment. The approach consists of a methodology based on numerical simulation models validated with comparison to field data. Numerical modelling includes the testing of different electrode arrays su...

Three-dimensional (3D) modelling is becoming a ubiquitous technology for the interpretation of cultural heritage objects. However most 3D models are based on geomatic data such as surveying, laser scanning or photogrammetry and therefore rely on the subject of the study being visible. This chapter presents the case study of Crowie, a submerged and...

Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) of archaeological samples (teeth and bones) can be used to track mobility and migration across geologically distinct landscapes. However, traditional interpolation algorithms and classification approaches used to generate Sr isoscapes are often limited in predicting multiscale 87Sr/86Sr patterning. Here we inves...

This article presents the results of historical research, as well as archaeological and geophysical surveys, in order to explore a number of frontier conflict events at Dead Man’s Flat in South Australia (SA). The historical records reveal the cruelty and complexity of the period and expose the concealments, contradictions, euphemistic language, de...

The Indigenous intangible heritage related to wrecked vessels has been poorly studied and documented. This article provides a counter to dominant maritime archaeology discourses via the investigation of the Aboriginal significance attributed to a wrecked and submerged River Murray barge (Crowie) in South Australia. There are numerous layers of Abor...

Malarrak 1 is currently the northernmost excavated rockshelter on the Australian mainland, located in the Wellington Range in north western Arnhem Land. The site contains a rich late Holocene deposit, with extensive contact rock art, stone artefacts, shell, bone, contact materials, ancestral human remains, and other cultural material. Excavation of...

Geophysical techniques have been widely employed for the noninvasive location of burial sites in archaeological and forensic investigations. This approach has met with varying degrees of success, depending on factors such as equipment choice, survey methodology, burial type, and geological setting. This paper reports the results of a multitechnique...

The use of geophysical techniques as an aid to archaeological investigations has become common-place, however these methods have only occasionally been applied in Indigenous Australian archaeology. This is despite recognition (and recommendations) since the 1970s that such approaches have the potential to yield positive results in such contexts (e....

Like elsewhere in Australia, the archaeology of northwest Queensland has focused on the antiquity of occupation and the continuity of that occupation through the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), in an attempt to better understand the adaptive capabilities and strategies of early humans. Veth (1989, 1993) has hypothesised that the northwest Queensland sa...

This paper identifies the emergence of the pursuit of social justice as a core focus of collaborative archaeologies in Aboriginal Australia. A wide range of case studies are examined, especially in relation to efforts to redress a ‘deep colonisation’ that silences Indigenous histories and fails to engage with Indigenous voices or experiences. This...

Over the last ten years, the use of Electro-Magnetic Induction (EMI) instruments for archaeological purposes has increased considerably. This development has come both from the availability of new instruments' with multi-coils spacing allowing a multi-depth analysis and because of the wide availability of high quality GPS positing which can be easi...

The analysis of the strontium isotope composition of archaeological materials can provide important information about the mobility of a range of mammals, including humans. The basis of this method is that, prior to any postburial diagenesis, the Sr87/Sr86 ratio of bone and teeth reflects the geological environment from which food and water were sou...

Ground penetrating radar, probing, and excavation were used to create a contour map of the topography of a buried laterite pavement forming the spillway of a large abandoned reservoir at the Angkorian‐period city of Koh Ker in Cambodia. Calculations of the flow velocity of water through the spillway, based on the topography of the laterite surface,...

In 2003 historical (non-Aboriginal) human skeletal remains archaeologically excavated from St Mary’s Anglican Church cemetery in Adelaide, South Australia were reinterred in a concrete subterranean crypt. This paper examines preservation status following 15 years of interment. Skeletal remains placed in sealed plastic bags inside plastic curation b...

A Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey was undertaken to map unmarked graves within the historic Walkerville Wesleyan Cemetery in Adelaide. The survey revealed 168 probable graves, 20 possible graves and 68 additional graves containing more than one interment. Our results demonstrate the utility of geophysical methods, specifically GPR, as a non i...

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) was used to non-invasively map the location of unmarkedgraves within the Lake Condah Mission Cemetery in western Victoria as a means of siting future interments. This cemetery was associated with the former Lake Condah Mission (established in 1869) and continues to be an important site for local Indigenous people. It...

Archaeological geophysics is a range of techniques for the minimally invasive, remote investigation of the physical parameters of the nearsurface environment. This suite of methods is complementary to archaeological survey or excavation as it can provide information about the stratigraphy of the survey area, locate anthropogenic traces of the past,...

Earth mounds are common archaeological features in some regions of Australia, particularly within the Murray-Darling Basin. These features are generally considered to have formed via the repeated use of earth oven cookery methods employed by Aboriginal people during the mid- to late-Holocene. This study assesses the relative effectiveness of key ge...

The Innovative Geophysical Approaches for the Study of Early Agricultural Villages of Neolithic Thessaly (ARISTEIA-IGEAN) Project made an extensive use of geospatial technologies in the study of the natural environment and social dynamics of Neolithic settlements within the coastal region of eastern Thessaly, Greece. The goal of the project was to...

In this ingenious co-operative case study, archaeologists and Indigenous peoples use geophysical survey to scan suitable places for the reburial of repatriated human remains. The process is also building a procedure for the low impact and respectful research of early Indigenous burial locations.

Western Arnhem Land in northern Australia has the rare distinction, both at national and global scales, of containing a vast landscape of many thousands of rockshelters richly decorated with art, some of which was probably made tens of thousands of years ago, others as recently as a few decades ago. Yet the challenge remains as to how to date this...

On 20 August 2007, Epemeavo and Kea Kea villagers from the eastern end of the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea reported finding two lagatoi hulls deeply buried in beach sands at Upihoi, near Epemeavo village, parts of a trading vessel associated with the renowned Motu hiri trade of former times. This paper presents results of an emergency investig...

The systematic exploration of large archaeological sites in the Mediterranean has evolved considerably since the “big dig” excavations. Pedestrian field surveying and remote sensing applications, including satellite and airborne image analysis, are now practical and relatively cost-efficient methods of characterizing large and diachronically divers...

Garment buttons and other artefacts incorporating mother-of-pearl (nacre) are significant items of material culture frequently found on archaeological sites and in museum collections. From around 1860 until the end of the Second World War, Australia was the foremost international source of mother-of-pearl for buttons, which were mechanically mass p...

In order to successfully understand the complex evolution of prehistoric societies, archaeologists require absolute dating tools, which are not only accurate but also widely applicable. Thermoluminescence (TL) dating is one such approach that has been successfully used to establish a general chronological framework for prehistoric sites and is part...

In 2011, we began researching the subsurface archaeology, geomorphology and rock art ofDalakngalarr 1, a moderately sized rock shelter on top of the central-western Arnhem Landplateau in Jawoyn Country. Here, four lines of evidence give relative or absolute ages for rockart:1. Archaeological excavations adjacent to a boulder that contains a paintin...

The Mun River valley is well known for its moat-bound mounded archaeological sites that are usually associated with Iron Age occupation (~500BC- AD500). The investigation of these sites has provided a wealth of information on the changing social and environmental conditions during late prehistory. In recent years, research has identified a greater...

Fish otoliths from the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area (south-western New South Wales, Australia) have been analysed for oxygen isotopes and trace elements using in situ techniques, and dated by radiocarbon. The study focused on the lunettes of Lake Mungo, an overflow lake that only filled during flooding events and emptied by evaporatio...

Chemical weathering of continental rocks plays a central role in regulating the carbon cycle and the Earth’s climate (Walker et al., 1981; Berner et al., 1983), accounting for nearly half the consumption of atmospheric carbon dioxide globally (Beaulieu et al., 2012). However, the role of climate variability on chemical weathering is still strongly...

New advances in 3D GIS provide the opportunity to create and interact with spatial datasets that are both empirical and experiential, thus bridging the historical divide between cartography and phenomenology. Survey and photogrammetry data from the colonial-era woolshed and port of Mount Dutton Bay in South Australia are used to create a visually r...

The burial mound of Le Tumulus des Sables, southwest France, contains archaeological artefacts spanning from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Human remains have been found throughout the burial mound, however their highly fragmented state complicates the association between the burial mound structure and the archaeological material. Radiocarbon datin...

IntroductionThe southern Arnhem Land plateau contains a rich mosaic of thousands of rock art sites located in outcrops of Proterozoic Marlgowa Sandstone of the Kombolgie formation (Carson et al. 1999) (Figure 11.1). Within this region in Jawoyn Country can be found Nawarla Gabarnmang, an impressive rockshelter exhibiting a gridded network of pillar...

Electromagnetic instrument responses suffer from signal drift that results in a variable response at a given location over time. If left uncorrected, spatiotemporal aliasing can manifest and global trends or abrupt changes might be observed in the data, which are independent of subsurface electromagnetic variations. By performing static ground meas...

Geophysical techniques are a commonly used, non-invasive method for the location of unmarked graves. Contrary to popular perception, most studies rely not on directly imaging skeletal material but instead on locating the subsurface disturbance created by grave digging. This approach is effective only when sufficient contrast exists between detectab...

In recent years, machine learning approaches have been used to classify and extract style from media and have been used to reinforce known chronologies from classical art history. In this work we employ the first ever machine learning analysis of Australian rock art using a data efficient transfer learning approach to identify features suitable for...

Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River- Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on...

Archaeological sites can be discovered and recorded in a high-resolution and non-invasivemanner using geophysical methods. These measure the spatial variation of a range ofphysical properties of the soil which may be representative proxies of the subsurfacearchaeology. Less-invasive and cost-effective field procedures have become top-priority tomit...

This paper examines the construction and design of a 7-km long embankment, probably builtfor King Jayavarman IV between 928 and 941 CE, as part of a new capital. We calculate thatthe capacities of the outlets were too small, and conclude that the embankment failed, probablywithin a decade of construction, so that the benefits of the reservoir store...

Geophysical investigations were undertaken using ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electromagnetic induction (EMI) at the Congregational Tabernacle (Yilke) Cemetery, Encounter Bay. These yielded 25 probable and 16 possible grave locations, identified due to the presence of adjacent stratigraphic breaks in the soil profile on multiple GPR lines. Tw...

This paper presents the results of a magnetometer survey and initial archaeological excavations of Macassan and Indigenous features conducted at the Anuru Bay Macassan trepang processing site. The archaeology of this area is complex, containing both material reflecting the Indigenous utilisation of coastal resources and the periodic visits of the M...

The Greater Angkor Region was the center of the Khmer Empire from the 9th until the 13th to the 14th centuries CE, when it entered a period of decline. Many studies have suggested that the decline of Angkor was precipitated by several factors, including severe monsoons, geopolitical shifts, and invasions. In this paper, we use light detection and r...

A bipartite geophysical survey methodology has been developed in order to locate archaeological sites in littoral environments and to gain precise information on their location, size and physical properties. The initial reconnaissance phase establishes the presence of prospective anomalies with limited time and budget. The second phase provides com...

The site of Sembiran on the northern coast of Bali was an important trading harbor with demonstrated intensive links to the Indian subcontinent, the Western Indian Ocean, and Mainland Southeast Asia between the second century BC and the second century AD. Using a combination of excavation and geophysical survey, we have newly mapped a dense network...

In homicide cases, it is difficult to provide resolution for the bereaved or to obtain a successful criminal conviction of the guilty party when no body is found. Since the mid-nineteenth century, geographic and environmental patterns have been used to better understand the relationship between crime and its environment. Now known as geographic pro...

The purpose of this review paper is to highlight various geomatic techniques that crime scene reconstructionists or forensic practitioners can use to document different kinds of scenes, highlighting the advantages, disadvantages, and when best to use each technology. This paper explores geomatic techniques such as a total station, photogrammetry, l...

A Sensitive High Resolution Ion MicroProbe (SHRIMP II) has been used to make high spatial resolution in situ micro-analyses of oxygen isotopes in fish otoliths, and teeth from fossil herbivores and a Neanderthal. Large intra-tooth variations in the oxygen isotopic composition (up to 9&) were observed in the enamel of herbivores from the Neanderthal...

In homicide cases, it is difficult to provide resolution for the bereaved or to obtain a successful criminal conviction of the guilty party when no body is found. Since the mid-nineteenth century, geographic and environmental patterns have been used to better understand the relationship between crime and its environment. Now known as geographic pro...

The location of unmarked graves in forensic and archaeological investigations is legally and culturally important. In a forensic context, locating covert burials of missing persons can provide closure to the family, as well as facilitating the successful prosecution of the individual(s) responsible. Archaeologically, burials provide an important so...

This article presents the results of historical research, as well as archaeological and geophysical surveys, in order to explore a number of frontier conflict events at Dead Man’s Flat in South Australia (SA). The historical records reveal the cruelty and complexity of the period and expose the concealments, contradictions, euphemistic language, de...

The Greater Angkor Region was the center of the Khmer Empire from the 9th until the 13th to the 14th centuries CE, when it entered a period of decline. Many studies have suggested that the decline of Angkor was precipitated by several factors, including severe monsoons, geopolitical shifts, and invasions. In this paper, we use light detection and r...

Evidence for complex behaviours appears sporadically through the Middle Stone Age of Africa, leaving unclear the major factors shaping the evolution of human behaviour. Here we present evidence for a novel suite of adaptations in the arid Knersvlake region of southern Africa that were deployed during a specific set of environmental conditions datin...

Electromagnetic (EM) instrument responses suffer from signal drift that results in a variable response at a given location over time. If left uncorrected, spatiotemporal aliasing can manifest and global trends or abrupt changes might be observed in the data, which are independent of subsurface electromagnetic variations. By performing static ground...

In recent years, machine learning approaches have been used to classify and extract style from media and have been used to reinforce known chronologies from classical art history. In this work we employ the first ever machine learning analysis of Australian rock art using a data efficient transfer learning approach to identify features suitable for...

Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr / 86Sr) of biogenic material such as bones and teeth reflect the local sources of strontium ingested as food and drink during their formation. This has led to the use of strontium isotope ratios as a geochemical tracer in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food studies and forensic sciences. In ord...

Establishing strontium isotope (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) geographical variability is a key component of any study that seeks to utilize strontium isotopes as tracers of provenance or mobility. Although lithological maps can provide a guideline, estimations of bioavailable ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr are often necessary, both in qualitative estimates of local strontium isotope “ca...

Strontium and oxygen isotopes provide a useful method for provenancing bioapaties, such as teeth and bone. In order for this approach to be successful, regional baseline bioavailable isotope data are required; however, few databases are currently available in Australia. This study measured stable oxygen and bioavailable strontium isotope ratios fro...

Establishing strontium isotope (87 Sr/ 86 Sr) geographical variability is a key component of any study that seeks to utilize strontium isotopes as tracers of provenance or mobility. Although lithological maps can provide a guideline, estimations of bioavailable 87 Sr/ 86 Sr are often necessary, both in qualitative estimates of local strontium isoto...

In 2003 historical (non-Aboriginal) human skeletal remains archaeologically excavated from St Mary’s Anglican Church cemetery in Adelaide, South Australia were reinterred in a concrete subterranean crypt. This paper examines preservation status following 15 years of interment. Skeletal remains placed in sealed plastic bags inside plastic curation b...

Strontium and oxygen isotopes provide a useful method for provenancing bioapaties, such as teeth and bone. In order for this approach to be successful, regional baseline bioavailable isotope data are required; however, few databases are currently available in Australia. This study measured stable oxygen and bioavailable strontium isotope ratios fro...

A Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey was undertaken to map unmarked graves within the historic Walkerville Wesleyan Cemetery in Adelaide. The survey revealed 168 probable graves, 20 possible graves and 68 additional graves containing more than one interment. Our results demonstrate the utility of geophysical methods, specifically GPR, as a non-i...